Aditya Birla sells BPO arm for Rs 1,600 cr to Capital Square

Funds raised may be used to grow retail and financial businesses

The Aditya Birla group has sold its business process outsourcing arm, Aditya Birla Minacs, to private equity firm Capital Square Partners for Rs 1,600 crore.

The board of Aditya Birla Nuvo approved the sale on Thursday.

The Birla group was planning to exit the business for some time and had been scouting for a buyer.

A company official had told this newspaper it was looking at exiting the business process outsourcing sector as it lacked scale.

The group is likely to use the capital raised from selling the BPO to grow the retail and financial businesses.

“Any business that does not fit into the criteria, we may look to sell, release the capital and instead invest that money in other businesses,” a Birla official told this paper.

Aditya Birla Minacs has 21,000 employees around the world, catering to clients from Apple to leading car makers abroad.

The revenue of the group’s BPO business, which consists of Canada-based Aditya Birla Minacs, is about $450 million a year. The number has not grown like some its peers.

Capital Square Partners is backed by entrepreneurs Sanjay Chakrabarty and Aparup Sengupta. In a filing to the BSE, Aditya Birla Nuvo said it had sold its information technology and information technology-enabled services subsidiary without giving the deal size.

Birlas are not alone in their plans to sell their BPO business. The Ruias of the Essar group had said they will sell their BPO unit, Aegis, for $1 billion. But the group failed to get any buyers as the global slowdown had deterred investors.